Create 3M eLearning Courses
10 Big Mistakes In eLearning Design And Development To Avoid
Online courses emerged in the ’80s and since then eLearning has been radically changing the training industry. While the eLearning industry is experiencing rapid evolution and organizations have seen massive cost and time saving through it, there are still issues like learner boredom, lack of interactions, lack of relevance, and inadequate real-world problem-solving. How can you make sure that you don’t face these challenges during the design and development process of your eLearning courses? Read on to find out which mistakes in eLearning design and development you should avoid.
Not understanding the target audience.
Before starting with eLearning design, thoroughly understand the target audience and the learning goals; you need to get answers to questions like what do they need to learn, what are their interests, what are their experience levels, or what is their education level etc.
Not giving enough time to do this research will make the whole course a complete waste of time because the learners won’t be able to relate with the course and not get the complete value from it.
Creating text-heavy pages.
eLearning courses need to be designed while paying careful attention to the Cognitive Load theory. This theory suggests that learners can absorb and retain information only if it does not overload their mental capacity. If an eLearning course floods the learner’s mind with a lot of information written on text-heavy pages, then the cognitive load on the learner is obvious.
Good courses avoid inclusion of irrelevant information and have a small and easily understandable breakup of complex concepts through paragraphs or bullets.
Instead of merely summarizing the information, the course should provide an enjoyable learning experience and retain the learner’s attention.
Mindless integration of graphics and images.
Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words; but only if it is a relevant picture. Irrelevant and low-quality images in eLearning courses will only distract the learners. While designing the courses, ensure that the pictures are on-topic and appropriate.
Not paying close attention to ease of navigation.
Even if you spend a lot of time designing the best content and images, if the learner is not able to navigate through the pages, then the whole content becomes meaningless. With the advent of smartphones and touchscreens, the browsing and navigation patterns of the learners have changed phenomenally, and therefore you, as the eLearning course designer, need to pay special attention to ensure that the courses are easy to navigate and it is easy for the learners to look for information.
Focusing too much on technology.
With tons of authoring tools, game development and simulation development tools, interactivity tools, and Learning Management Systems, it is natural to get overwhelmed with technology.
Be careful about spending too much time and energy on the choice of tools and technologies and don’t forget to focus on delivering true learning outcomes. You need to choose the technologies which can help in achieving those outcomes.
Imitating traditional classroom training in eLearning.
Classroom training and eLearning are two completely different methods of imparting training and skills to the learners: The nature of training, methodologies, and learner expectations are completely different in these two methods.
While eLearning adopts many features from the classroom training, it has some unique attributes which should be leveraged to offer effective training. Through eLearning courses, you can offer personalized learning experiences, tell stories, and engage learners with the use of audio and video.
Ignoring social learning.
It is a well-known fact that 80% of the learning is happening around us, in the informal learning space. While this does not dilute the importance of formal training, you need to acknowledge the fact that today learners are used to social media and are constantly learning through social interactions.
Ignoring social learning completely from the eLearning courses can be a big mistake. You need to create informal learning experiences tightly integrated inside the eLearning courses, and this is much beyond creating and controlling informal learning spaces.
Not paying attention to the emotional journey of the learner.
Emotional design is an upcoming trend in eLearning design. It says that through the use of right instruction strategies and creative design, eLearning courses can develop a connection with the learners.
Completion rate is one of the biggest problems in eLearning and the right emotional design seem to the offer solution for the same. When the learner is emotionally connected with the courses, he/ she better comprehends the concepts and the chances of completion increase.
Creating assessments which don’t challenge the learners.
Periodic assessments and exercises embedded in the courses provide you with an opportunity to determine whether the learners are absorbing the information and retaining it. At the end of such small section quizzes, you can summarize and recap the information so that the learners commit it to the long-term memory.
Mismanagement of eLearning content management.
Along with the design of meaningful and stunning eLearning courses, you need to also pay attention to the maintainability of the courses.
In case the need arises, it should be easy to update the course content, images, text, or animation files.
While the creation of right and impactful eLearning courses is important, it is also crucial to ensure that the eLearning strategy aligns with the organizational goals and business needs and there is complete buy-in from the management. Along with the right choice of tools and technologies, the roles and responsibilities of the eLearning design and development team, and also the other stakeholders in the project, should be clearly defined.
As Michael Allen has defined, the 3Ms of impactful eLearning courses are “Meaningful”, “Memorable” and “Motivational” – and you need all three!
6 Best Practices To Choose Images In eLearning
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Images do exactly that; they tell stories, often in milliseconds. The more impressive, detailed, and lively is an image, the more effective it gets.
This is why pictures can be very powerful tools in the right hands, and this is why it takes time to find the right images for any eLearning deliverable.
But what does “right” mean? This article shares 6 best practices to choose images in eLearning so that you can make sure that the pictures you select for your eLearning courses support your online content, engage your learners, and, indeed, tell the right story every time.
Think relevance.
Starting an image search looking for inspiration is rarely effective; most of the time is confusing and highly time-consuming.
Before you begin your search you need to have a specific idea about what you’re looking for. Your goal is to find an image which is relevant both to your topic and your audience.
For example, let’s say that you need to illustrate low performance in the sales department; a picture showing a grocer sleeping behind his bench wouldn’t be relevant, would it? On the contrary, it would distract your audience, in this case, sales professionals. Knowing who your learners are is extremely important for choosing images in eLearning, especially when content localization is involved.
Make sure that, before you begin your image search, you have analyzed your audience and gather all necessary information about them, such as their educational and professional backgrounds, their ages, their cultural characteristics, and so on.
Check whether your images reinforce your message.
An irrelevant picture distracts, confuses, and even annoys your audience, and so does a “weak” image.
Remember that you are not looking for stock images just to fill space. Images need to support your text and convey the message you are trying to get across; they are there to help learners grasp a concept when they read the eLearning content and they cannot understand it. Ideally, even learners who don’t read the content should be able to easily get the idea by looking at the supporting images. In other words, if the images you select don’t transmit the right message, it might be a good idea not to include them in your eLearning course. Ask yourself whether the picture that grabbed your attention during your search not only makes sense to your learners but also conveys the impression you want. If the answer is “yes”, you’re heading in the right direction. If the answer is “no” or “I’m not sure”, keep looking.
Look for images that evoke emotions.
Effective visuals address people’s emotions and invoke excitement. If you want your learners to remember the image you picked, get them interested or make them laugh! Your main goal is to connect with your audience; to engage them. Evoking their emotions is one of the best ways to do that, and the right image is the perfect tool. To ensure that you choose the right “emotionally-charged” picture, that is, to avoid being over the top, melodramatic or, in some cases, even offensive, use the data from analyzing your audience: What are their learning preferences and needs? The more you know about your learners, the abler you will be to choose effective images and evoke the right kind of emotions.
Use your images consistently.
A professional looking eLearning course has a consistent look and feel; this means that all visuals need to be consistent throughout the eLearning course. For instance, mixing clip art, vector images, and photographs is not a good idea; try to focus on one style of images. Consistency helps learners concentrate and makes it easier for them to connect with your online content, whereas a random combination of different visual styles is distracting and obstructs the learning process.
Know that size matters.
And by “size” we mean “resolution”. Think of image resolution as image quality; the lower the resolution, the lower the quality of your images.
High resolution means that the picture is clear, sharp, and all its details become visible. You don’t want to select a great looking image and no one to be able to appreciate its beauty, do you? On the other hand, you cannot include very high-resolution pictures in your eLearning course, as they become too heavy to open quickly. This is why you need to always make sure that the size of your images is correct.
Resize them before you add them to your eLearning course to ensure that they are big enough to draw attention and build an immediate connection with the viewers, but not as big as to frustrate learners by slowing down the loading process.
Beware of copyright issues.
Last but certainly not least, make sure you respect copyright law.
If the pictures you use are not from an authorized source, you disobey the policies and guidelines of the marketplace and this may lead to legal conflicts.
Almost every picture out there is an original work and there are different kinds of rights attached to them; consider choosing royalty free images, which come with least amount of restrictions and for which you will need to pay only once to use them as many times as you want. Otherwise, you are only allowed to use the image for a limited time and renew the license after a specified period of time. In any case, always make sure that you have purchased the images you use before you send your eLearning product to your client, to avoid unpleasant surprises.